Woolwich attack: of course British foreign policy
had a role

I am a former soldier. I completed one tour of
duty in Afghanistan, refused on legal and moral grounds to serve a
second tour, and spent five months in a military prison as a result.
When the news about the
attack in Woolwich broke, by pure coincidence
Ross Caputi was crashing on my sofa. Ross is a soft-spoken ex-US
marine turned film-maker who served in Iraq and witnessed the
pillaging and irradiation of Falluja. He is also a native of Boston,
the scene of a
recent homegrown terror attack. Together, we watched the news, and
right away we were certain that what we were seeing was informed by the
misguided military adventures in which we had taken part.

So at the very outset, and before the rising tide
of prejudice and pseudo-patriotism fully encloses us, let us be clear:
while nothing can justify the savage killing in Woolwich yesterday of a
man since confirmed to have been a serving British soldier, it should
not be hard to explain why the murder happened.

These awful events cannot be explained in the
almost Texan terms of Colonel
Richard Kemp, who served as commander of British forces in
Afghanistan in 2001. He tweeted on last night that they were "not about
Iraq or Afghanistan", but were an attack on "our way of life". Plenty of
others are saying the same.

But let's start by examining what emerged from the
mouths of the assailants themselves. In an accent that was pure London,
according to one of the
courageous women who intervened at the scene, one alleged killer
claimed he was "… fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan …".
It is unclear whether it was the same man, or his alleged co-assailant,
who said "… bring our [Note: our] troops home so we can all
live in peace".

It should by now be self-evident that by attacking
Muslims overseas, you will occasionally spawn twisted and, as we saw
yesterday, even murderous hatred at home. We need to recognise that,
given the continued role our government has chosen to play in the US
imperial project in the Middle East, we are lucky that these attacks are
so few and far between.

It is equally important to point out, however,
that rejection of and opposition to the toxic wars that informed
yesterday's attacks is by no means a "Muslim" trait. Vast swaths of the
British population also stand in opposition to these wars, including
many veterans of the wars like myself and Ross, as well as serving
soldiers I speak to who cannot be named here for fear of persecution.

Yet this anti-war view, so widely held and
strongly felt, finds no expression in a parliament for whom the merest
whiff of boot polish or military jargon causes a fit of "Tommy this,
Tommy that …" jingoism. The fact is, there are two majority views in
this country: one in the political body that says war, war and more war;
and one in the population which says it's had enough of giving up its
sons and daughter abroad and now, again, at home.

For 12 years British Muslims have been set upon,
pilloried and alienated by successive governments and by the media for
things that they did not do. We must say clearly that the alleged
actions of these two men are theirs alone, regardless of being informed
by the wars, and we should not descend into yet another round of
collective responsibility peddling.

Indeed, if there is collective responsibility for
the killings, it belongs to the hawks whose policies have caused
bloodbaths – directly, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and indirectly in
places as far apart as Woolwich and Boston, which in turn have created
political space for the far right to peddle their hatred, as we saw in
the
immediate aftermath of the Woolwich attack.

What we must do now
is straightforward enough. Our own responsibilities are first of all to
make sure innocents are not subject to blanket punishment for things
that they did not do, and to force our government – safe in their houses
– to put an end to Britain's involvement in the vicious foreign
occupations that have again created bloodshed in London